Diversion

We got the minivan back from the shop this week, and today I had the distinct pleasure of attending a diversion class for the ticket I had received (you all remember my accident, right?) The diversion class was the kind with the driving simulator—whenever you’re involved in an accident this is the type of class you get. It ran from nine until about three.

The class by itself was just fine; full of information and videos about traffic safety, etc. Definitely worth it to get the ticket expunged from the record. The simulators, though, they were something else…

…as in, really old technology. I’m quite sure they were state-of-the-art fifteen years ago, but in this day and age they just seem, well, sad. Seriously, these are circa early- to mid-nineties units; the “simulators” are basically adjustable seats with the simplest possible console you can imagine: steering wheel, ignition, speedometer, and indicator lights for the program. Gas and brake pedals. Gear shift (for an automatic) and emergency brake.

Everyone sits in these consoles and watches a screen where the “simulation” is projected from—I kid you not—laserdisc. Laserdisc! Aside from thrift stores, I haven’t seen a live laserdisc player since the late 80s. And it’s just a movie, basically, no real interaction—you simply “drive” the console in accordance with what’s on the screen, and the indicator lights flash if there was an error of some sort (too fast or slow, no turn signal, etc.).

All very basic. Embarrassingly so.

Modern video game systems are more advanced than this. In fact, with how affordable technology is these days, there’s almost no reason you couldn’t put together a simulator out of a PlayStation or Xbox, cheap LCD monitor, and driving controls (which I’ve seen for racing games), and have the entire system come in for well under $1000.

Laserdisc! I’m still shaking my head.